What kind of person is journalism?

For reasons I won’t bore you with, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the identity of journalism. Not what a journalist is (although that has figured a lot in my thoughts lately) but what journalism is. And I’d love your view on something.

The academics will tell you that it’s impossible, even naive to think of journalism as a single thing. There is some sense in that. The diverse nature of journalism makes it difficult to find any common ground on which you could build a singular definition. There is also part of me that thinks that it serves academics well to demand a broader, more fluid definition – what would we write about otherwise!

But in this more personal, web2.0 media world where people follow people it struck me that even if it’s mediated by individual journalists (or community manager/editor) the ‘person’ that most of the public do business with is journalism.

As a journalism student, I am definitely still trying to figure out myself what journalism really is also. Not only what it is exactly in a broader sense, but also what journalism is to me as someone who is trying to pursue it someday as a career. What it means for me as a person and how it affects my life. Especially in this day and age where almost everyone with an internet connection can play the role of a journalist. So.. If I had to guess, I would say journalism is the kind of person that always knows everything, highly observant, and that go-to person that everyone else goes to for information.